Now I'm 100 percent certain that it was Ade's estate, as I've come across two more similar Hazelden postcards that state "THE HOME OF GEORGE ADE" right across the bottom. Can't get any better proof than that!

Finally, we go from the magnificent images along the Rhine to ... this. I'm not sure why this postcard exists. It's a "Lusterchrome" shot with the caption: "LOOKING EAST AT FORT LITTLETON INTERCHANGE -- On the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the World's Greatest Highway."

Fort Littleton, in Fulton County, is an unincorporated place that doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page.

Woolf and her husband, Leonard, ran Hogarth Press together from 1917 to 1938 and among the works they published were a pair of long-form poems by Manning-Sanders -- "Karn" in 1922 and "Martha Wish-You-Ill" by 1926.1

In the five-volume "The Diary of Virginia Woolf," which spans her experiences from 1915 to 1941, there are a handful of references to Manning-Sanders. Here are a couple of those excerpts, plucked from Volume 2 of the diaries.

February 4, 1922 (a Saturday)
"Mrs Manning Sanders forges ahead.2 She has reached the printing off stage, which means that Ralph works in the basement, & leaves the machine dirty."

February 6, 1922 (a Monday)
"Mrs Manning Sanders is a bob haired, wide mouthed woman, dressed in a velvet dressing gown, plump, sandy-haired with canine-brown eyes far apart. We liked her. But to Ralph her Fitzroy St3 origin was against her -- this is his rule of thumb measure -- for God knows, he said nothing, & is hard & angular as a block of wood. However, we had Mrs M.S. from 5 to 7.15"

Manning-Sanders was 35 during the aforementioned 1922 meeting, while Woolf had just turned 40 the previous month. The meeting likely would have taken place at the Woolfs' house in London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.

Here's one more excerpt from this volume of Woolf's diary that mentions Manning-Sanders' "Karn," but is more notable for the other literary figures who are mentioned:

June 23, 1922 (a Friday)
"Now I have little time for anything else. We have seen a great many people. ... Eliot dined last Sunday & read his poem. He sang it & chanted it rhythmed it. It has great beauty & force of phrase: symmetry; & tensity. What connects it together, I'm not so sure. But he read till he had to rush -- letters to write about the London Magazine -- & discussion thus was curtailed. One was left, however, with some strong emotion. The Waste Land, it is called... Morgan, who is now out & about again, thanks to Leonard's advice, very calm, serene, like a kettle boiling point by some private fire, a fire at Weybridge, spent the night here after the Dinner, & then we sat round the table & discussed his book. Our list grows more & more distinguished, but why is there no boom in Tolstoi? No one buys Karn, or Fredegond; but Bunin sells now fairly well."

Footnotes1. For an example of Manning-Sanders' poetry from this era, see this Papergreat post.
2. The following isn't my footnote. It's the footnote that appears at this spot in Woolf's published diary, as edited by Anne Olivier Bell: "Karn, 'a new long poem by a short fat poetess' (II VW Letters, no. 1213), Ruth Manning Sanders, was printed by the Hogarth Press and published in May 1922 (HP Checklist 23)."
3. "Fitzroy St" might be a reference to the Fitzrovia neighborhood, but this is decidedly not my area of expertise.

There is, indeed, a little bit more information along those lines, so I'm sharing that with a series of scans in today's post.

First up (at right) is a section titled "Tickets at reduced rates on the Polish State Railways for foreign tourists." Two excerpts:

"15 days tickets valid for all the lines and all the trains at the price of zł. 60. ... Those tickets are delivered by the travel offices abroad the Polish frontier stations and at the principal stations in Poland, only to holders of a foreign passport."

"Transit tickets, for transit across Poland, of at least 500 km one way. The price of such tickets is 22 zł. (3-rd) for journeys of 500 to 750 km, and 26.-zł. for journeys over 750 km. These tickets are good for all trains and allow the journey to be broken twice within the 2 months validity. Transit tickets are delivered only by travel offices outside Poland."

Second, here's a section titled "Where to obtain informations about Poland?" (Click on the image for a larger version.)

Two travel agencies are mentioned in this section -- the Polish Orbis Travel Office and Cooks-Wagons-Lits World Travel Services.

According to this Demotix news article, Orbis Travel announced its bankruptcy on September 29, 2010. It had been one of the largest and oldest travel agencies in Poland, having been founded in Lviv in 1920. According to the article, it was founded: "to create a travel agency with an international standard of service, an institution that would be the window to the world for the citizens of the newly reborn Polish state."

Orbis moved its headquarters to Warsaw in 1933. In 1939, according to the Demotix article, it had 136 branches in Poland and 19 abroad, with 500 employees and four hotels offering a total of 360 rooms. In 1939, Orbis handled more than 5 million customers. (I'm guessing that almost all of that 1939 Orbis business came before September 1, 1939.)

The other travel agency mentioned is Cook-Wagons-Lits World Travel Services. It is also written as "Wagons-Lits/Cook" at one point. In any combination, though, I can't find much current information on this company, beyond The World's Emptiest Facebook Page. Anyone have any historical insight on this travel agency?

Finally, here's a section titled "Formalities on entering Poland":

An interesting note here is that "Foreign motorists touring in Poland pay a road tax of 1 Zl. per day. The motorists holding 90-day Tourists Cards, issued by their national Automobile Club or Touring Club, are exempt from that tax."

Footnotes1. The MS Piłsudski, shown at left in the top photo on today's entry, was launched in 1935 and torpedoed and sunk on November 26, 1939, during her first wartime voyage, off the Humber, near Yorkshire, England.
2. The real world and my day job as the sports editor of a Pennsylvania newspaper took greater precedence the past couple of days, with the news of the horrific child-abuse charges from the campus of Penn State University. Here's my commentary, as a Penn State grad, on the ongoing case.

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About the Author

I'm Chris Otto, a Pennsylvania resident and journalist whose hobbies and interests include old books, ephemera, history, folklore, alpacas, photography and much more. Never stop reading, learning and asking questions! I consider this blog to be a spiritual descendant of Microsoft Encarta and a companion to Wikipedia. Every piece of paper tells a story.
Reach me at chrisottopa (at) gmail.com.

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